Station History

The Southampton University radio station is currently known a
Surge, however this is only a recent development. Until Christmas
2000 the station was called Radio Glen. This was changed due to the
increased involvement of the station with the rest of the
university and not just the Glen Eyre halls of residence, where the old
AM transmitter is sited.

Henry Walmsley was Chief
Engineer for Radio Glen a number of years ago and although he has
since left, evidence of his hard work still remains all over the
station. He built much of the equipment that is still used everyday
by our DJs, although much of it has been heavily modified by
subsequent station technicians. The picture to the right is of
Henry stood by M block, a photo which was kept on
the wall of our old Glen Eyre office. Even today Henry keeps in
touch with the station, and is never far away when a member of our
technical team have a question about how something works!

In its previous incarnation as Radio Glen the station was legal
for about 20 years and existed in some form even before then known
as Radio Heffalump. The station used
to be broadcast by a series of antenna in every block in Glen
connected by bits of coaxial cable which were draped all over the
place, this is know an an induction loop system, and is now used by
very limited number of radio stations.

The station originally broadcast from a studio in F block in Glen,
and on the photos page, there are a selection of shots showing this
studio. In 1998 everything moved to a new specially designed room
in New Terrace which provided us with a good technical cupboard and
a room to use as an office.

In 1999 the station manager David Holroyd aka Wiggy
decided to get a new license being offered by the Radio Authority
called a Long Term LPAM RSL. This license allows low powered AM
broadcasting over a strictly limited area, in our case the Glen
Eyre Halls. This license has been great for the station as we no
long need to maintain miles of cable, and can reach a far greater
number of students.

2001 was another big year for the station as in conjunction with
the Students' Union we were given the opportunity to run a month
long FM RSL, essentially a license that allows us to broadcast on
FM for up to one month. This enabled us to be heard across the
whole of Southampton, and as far as Winchester and the Isle of
Wight. We have run an FM RSL every year since then, usually
broadcasting on 87.7 FM and using it as an opportunity to showcase
our best talent!

Around the same time, we began to broadcast online, initially using
equipment funded by the School of Electronics and Computer Science.
Since then our web streams have grown in popularity, and this in
turn has led to us exploring new areas such as the growing craze
which is podcasting.

The Beatle (a BTR), is a reel to reel tape recorder in
the Surge studios. It has been suggested there were two brought to Surge from the BBC in London
during a clear out. The story that we acquired it from Abbey Road
Studios, and that the Beatles recorded some of their tracks on it,
may have originated in the fact that EMI manufactured the machines.

Unfortunately, in 2010, our AM transmitter broke and Surge became an online only station. This has, however, provided us with
the opportunity to focus on our online broadcasts, and makes our limited FM periods that extra bit more special!